Amazon ups the ante in the cloud music wars–iPad app, unlimited music storage

First, Amazon and then Google launch services that let you upload music to their servers for streaming playback to almost any device. Sure, the music labels are miffed that they weren’t allowed to give their blessings, but that’s a minor issue – or not.

Then, Apple – the 900-pound gorilla of online music – comes along with iCloud and iTunes Match. These services are similar to those provided by Google Music Beta and Amazon Cloud Player. The iCloud part, which lets you download purchased iTunes music to any iOS device you own, is free. iTunes Match will charge you to match non-iTunes music to songs in that service’s catalog, and then downloads an AAC song file to be stored on your computer for $25 a year.

Now, Amazon has responded to Apple’s moves. On Wednesday, the company announced it was expanding how Cloud Player works. If you buy any of its Cloud Drive file storage plans, Amazon will give you unlimited storage for your music.

For example, if you purchase the 20-gigabyte-a-year file storage package, you can upload any amount of music free, and it won’t count against the 20-GB cap.

And as if to hammer home that its enhancements are indeed aimed at countering Apple, Amazon unveiled an iPad version of the Cloud Player for music, rendered as a Web app.

Although there’s no similarly formatted version for the iPhone or iPod touch, the technology that allows playback for songs works nevertheless. Go to the Cloud Player on your smaller iOS device and you can stream your songs from there.

If you’ve got an iPad that has 32- or 64-GB of storage, you may not have much use for this. But, if you’re like me with a 16-GB model that can’t hold all your music, this is a great service. For now, if you buy any music from AmazonMP3, you get a year’s worth of 20-GB music storage for free. After that, you’ll have to decide if it’s worth at least $20 a year to store 20 GB of files and an unlimited amount of music.

Personally, I’m on the fence. Ask me when it’s renewal time whether Cloud Storage is a “must have”.